Court to Elks club: Pay up

Judge tells Hartford Elks to come up with payment plan for overdue bill in discrimination case

Apr. 24, 2013

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

MONTPELIER — Top officials for a Hartford Elks lodge soon could be ordered into court to explain why their organization has balked at paying any of the $709,000 owed to victims and lawyers in a long-running sex-discrimination case.

Washington Superior Court Judge Robert Bent, presiding over a hearing Wednesday involving the 18-year-old dispute, asked a lawyer to provide him the names and addresses of Elks officials so he could prepare judicial summonses to force their appearance sometime in late May or early June.

Bent said he wanted “the ability to have everyone in one place at one time so we can make real decisions in real time.”

Seven women sued the Elks chapter after their applications for membership were rejected in 1996, a year after the national Elks organization had approved the admission of women to its member clubs a year earlier.

Four of the women stuck with the case in the years that followed and, along with the Vermont Human Rights Commission, won a jury verdict against the Elks in 2005. The Elks refused to pay the damage award and related attorneys fees, then estimated at $300,000.

Interest on the debt has more than doubled the amount owed since then. Last year, after a court order was used to seize $17,000 from the Elks bank account to pay down the debt, the Elks shifted to operating on a cash basis and storing its income in a safe to avoid another seizure, according to court documents.

“The corporation is in the business of hiding assets,” Edwin “Ted” Hobson, attorney for the women, told Bent. “That’s what they do.”

Among the parties owed money by the Elks is Norman Watts, the Woodstock attorney who represented them in the sex-discrimination trial. He was owed $30,150 as of early 2009, records show.

Watts on Wednesday disputed a claim by former Elks chapter treasurer Barry Betters, who said in an interview this week that Watts told the group it could win the case if it went to court.

“I agreed to represent the Lodge, not because I thought them innocent of discrimination but because all litigants deserve representation,” Watts wrote in an email to the Burlington Free Press.

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At Wednesday’s hearing, Bent asked Richard Blodgett, the Hartford Elks’ exalted leader, how much money was in the lodge’s safe.

Blodgett said he didn’t know, but the group’s trustees did. None of the trustees, however, were at the hearing, a predicament that appeared to irritate Bent.

“I want somebody in here who knows what’s in the safe,” Bent said. “People who know are not here, and that is not going to help me.”

Blodgett later told Bent that the Hartford Elks are willing to cooperate with the court and work out a monthly payment system with Hobson.

Bent said that sounded like a “logical outcome” but noted years have passed with the Elks making no effort to pay their debt.

“There needs to be some mechanism to bring this thing to an end in some orderly way,” Bent said. “The Elks ... have a chance to do the moral thing here. You may have the ability to run and hide, but is that the moral thing to do?”

Blodgett said Wednesday afternoon he thought the hearing before Bent had gone well. “I think it was very positive,” he said.

Blodgett also confirmed the Hartford Elks lodge was broken into Tuesday night, resulting in damage to the lodge’s juke box and an ATM. He also said a safe belonging to an upstairs tenant in the building was taken.